Ratchet: Deadlocked (PS2) review

Before making their leap to the PS3, Insomniac Games developed one more game in the Ratchet & Clank series, and this one is not often looked upon by fans. I will take a look at Ratchet: Deadlocked to see if it is worthy of that.

Story

A lot of heroes in the Solana Galaxy have been disappearing, but revealed to have been taking part in an illegal combat sport called Dreadzone, created by Gleeman Vox, where heroes are forced to kill each other.

After the events of Up Your Arsenal, Ratchet, Clank, and Al are running the Starship Phoenix, when some menacing robots appear out of nowhere and kidnap them. They are taken to the Shadow Sector and Ratchet is forced to compete in Dreadzone. The three are given Deadlock collars which will explode if they become uncooperative or boring. Clank becomes the "Mission Engineer", giving Ratchet advice, and Al serves as the mechanic for the Combat Bots, Merc and Green, who aid Ratchet. Together, they hatch a plan to deactivate the collars and rescue the other prisoners, as well as putting a stop to Vox's game show.

Gleeman Vox

One thing different from the game’s predecessors is that it is much darker in tone due to the premise. Despite that, the comedy is still present to balance the tone. New characters include Merc and Green, Ratchet’s robotic assistants; Gleeman Vox, the main antagonist; Ace Hardlight, the champion of Dreadzone and lead Exterminator, who Vox keeps exploiting; and Dallas and Juanita, the hilarious commentators.

Gameplay

The game is similar to its predecessors, but more of a focus on shooting and less platforming, while still keeping the RPG elements. You can still purchase weapons from weapon vendors as well as upgrades for the Combat Bots at Al's shop. Weapons and health can still be upgraded with experience points.

In addition, you can also purchase two types of modifications for your weapons, “Alpha” and “Omega” mods. The “Alpha” mods improve statistics like rate of fire and ammo while “Omega” mods adds a secondary effect to the weapon such as napalm, acid, bombs, and electricity. You can switch them around at any time to see which mods fit best with each weapon. In normal mode, you can upgrade weapons to Level 10, but in Challenge Mode, you can upgrade to Level 99. There are a total of 10 weapons in the game, the smallest amount in any game in the series.

Ratchet, Merc and Green fighting an Exterminator.

You play as Ratchet (without Clank on his back) as you complete mission objectives on each planet, with the help of Merc and Green who have extra firepower and can perform several tasks like planting explosives, making a bridge, or hacking.

There are various vehicles like the hovership, Puma, Landstalker, and hoverbike, which are really useful throughout the game, but the controls take a while to get used to. For the hovership and hoverbike, you have to push the left stick forward in order to accelerate and the right stick to strafe, which makes the flying through rings challenges a little iffy at best.

When you complete a mission, you earn a number of Dreadzone points and bolts. Dreadzone Points are necessary to progress through the game's story, as it gains access to a series of challenges at the main arena preceding a boss fight with an Exterminator.

This is also the first game in the series to have a difficulty setting. The settings, from lowest to highest, are Couch Potato, Contestant, Gladiator, Hero, and Exterminator.

Multiplayer

This is the first game in the series to include cooperative play, where you play the game’s story, but Merc and Green are omitted. Both players can use Merc and Green’s gadgets in order to get through obstacles and when riding vehicles, one player drives and the other shoots.

The online/offline competitive multiplayer returns, with five game modes: Conquest (earning bolts by killing enemies and capturing nodes), Deathmatch (kill all opposing enemies to the frag or time limit), Capture the Flag (self-explanatory), King of the Hill (reaching maximum number of points in control of the barrier), and Juggernaut (similar to Deathmatch). I wish I could go into more detail, but I haven’t played much of the multiplayer and I can’t find someone to play it with.

Graphics, Level Design, and Audio

There isn't much I can say about the graphics and level design since not much has changed and it still contains the large scale of Up Your Arsenal.

The audio in the game is a mixed bag for me. For one, I think David Bergeaud’s score is pretty weak compared to the previous games and one of the least memorable apart from the “Challenge Complete” music. I will give it credit: it still sounds like Ratchet & Clank music, it perfectly matches the dark tone of the game and it sometimes feels like I’m watching a game show.

There is not much to say about the voice acting, either, but Dallas and Juanita (voiced by Darran Norris and Nika Futterman, respectively) give out hilarious in-game commentary. One of my favorite lines comes from Dallas: “Have you ever danced with the Diablo in pale moonlight? I have and it’s fantastic!” It’s not because of the Batman reference, but because of how unexpected the follow-up sentence is.

Conclusion

In short, while it is not the best Ratchet & Clank game, it is still a lot of fun and it doesn’t deserve to be frowned upon by fans. Sure, the game gets repetitive and it suffers from some slowdowns (my game froze a few times because of so much activity going on in some challenges), but some of the elements from the series formula are still present, and there are a heck-ton of enemies to fight, which makes the whole thing satisfying to play through. If you didn’t like it the first time, I suggest giving it another try.

Now, I haven't played much of the HD remastering, but I do know that Idol Minds seriously needs to patch this game.